AG finds transportation issues in two Lackawanna County school districts

The Dunmore School District paid its bus contractor nearly $257,000 more than the state’s transportation formula between 2010 and 2012, a state auditor general’s office audit found.

Despite that, Dunmore Business Manager Antoinette Lopatka said the district is actually not getting a bad deal, and the state’s transportation funding formula gives small districts like Dunmore the short end of the stick.

The district paid Pete’s Garage 65 percent more than the state’s formula allowance for busing in 2010-11 and 82 percent more than the calculation for 2011-12, auditors found.

The pupil transportation subsidy covers about half of transportation costs for a district on average across the state, said Tim Eller, press secretary of the state Department of Education. That means the district was around 15 percent and 32 percent over the state average, respectively.

Bidding recommended

Auditors noted the district had not been putting the transportation contract out to bid and recommended school officials solicit bids when the five-year contract is up at the end of 2014-15 to see if competition cuts costs — even though soliciting bids is not required.

“Since PDE provides a state allowance, it would be prudent for the district to consider that the money that goes toward the transportation contract is local and state revenue that is not going towards educating the children of the district,” auditors wrote in their report.

Dunmore school officials have been able to negotiate small percentage price increases in their contracts with Pete’s Garage but nonetheless will solicit bids next time, Ms. Lopatka said.

The bigger problem for Dunmore is the state’s transportation funding formula gives geographically small but densely populated districts like Dunmore a structural financial disadvantage.

The formula distributes aid based on a complex formula involving daily mileage, age of vehicles and number of students per vehicle.

“Districts that cover less square miles usually don’t get paid by the formula,” Ms. Lopatka said.

The Dunmore School District is about 8 square miles, serves 1,535 students in a 14,052-resident borough and has seven bus runs, only one of which is more than 50 miles round trip.

Another one is shorter than 20 miles.

Lakeland underpaid

In a separate audit of the Lakeland School District, the auditor general’s office reported school officials incorrectly reported transportation data in 2008-09, which resulted in an underpayment of $86,183 to the district.

The district should review all previous reports to look for errors, as well as review all future reports before submission, the auditors recommended.

The audit also found errors in reporting the number of days foster children attended school in the district, which resulted in an underpayment of $14,833 in the 2009-10 school year and a $41,317 underpayment in the 2011-12 school year.

The Department of Education will correct all underpayments, and in a written response to the report, school officials said they will increase supervision of data entry in the system that tracks students.

Contact the writers:

kwind@timesshamrock.com,

@kwindTT on Twitter;

rbrown@timesshamrock.com, @rbrownTT on Twitter

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